Solve et Coagulatio / Dissolve in Acid
I wrote the whole entry without even mentioning the most important part, because imposter syndrome. So I’ve gone back and added: I had my first-ever one-person show and my first theatrical performance since high school on Wednesday, 4 December 2024, or 2 Kame, the day of duality and ultimate transitions, new beginnings, in the trecena I was born into: Kan, my kingdom.
It didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. But it was perfect in its way, because it set the stage for a personal breakthrough I have been waiting for my whole life. Where I finally woke up in an energy of peace and centeredness, and I realized that the moments I had looked back on in life as being versions of me that existed once and had died or been extinguished, those were just the time when the ever-present Self-Energy emerged, and was observed, conjured into material existence for a moment, which is all it can ever be in this dimension. Briefly materialized, spiritualized matter made apparently fixed, waves pretending to be particles, doing their own performance. I finally felt and gnew in my soul what it meant, that phrase that started this whole journey when Rob Bell said it on a podcast:
“You are already at the party, and you’ve been here the whole time, and everything I have is yours.”
I feel it now. And I was about to sit with cacao, but realized I didn’t need it.
I finally then grokked what it meant that “you are the medicine.”
And what I had been reading in this book about spiritual codependency and giving your power away to teachers and gurus, a big theme of the play and my life, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, also made sense. I am the teacher I’ve been seeking, the guru I’ve been begging for salvation, the parent I’ve been desperate to be seen by and the lover I’ve been longing to redeem me.
The longing is, in fact, the point. This is spirituality, mysticism, divinity. And so of course it’s also art and addiction. Same archetype, different expression.
I forgot half the words, but everyone was so generous with their time and spirit, and it still moved Alis to tears and resonance, so I have to call it successful. And Dave has given me a 50-minute slot to workshop, which will have to be performed in January, because I have to leave the country, because the visa is, for. now, a roadblock.
But I’m just getting started.
When I can just trust and surrender, be open to the flow, the waters meet at the bend and rush to a point that makes sense.
This week it was all pooling around the concept of coagulation and dissolving itself, the alchemical process involving the liquid and solidification elements.
A metaphor for death and resurrection, and the million tiny dyings and rebirths we undertake in a lifetime.
The way our initiatory cycles, psychedelic journeys and illnesses and injuries, divorces and identity crises, abuse and descents into addiction and madness, they dissolve us in acid, sometimes literally, shattering the illusion of wholeness and solidity and collapsing us into particles, until an act of observation resumes the wave function, we are conjured back into existence through the witnessing and assume form, pretending for a moment to be solid, the prima materia, again.
Solve et coagulatio, coagulate and dissolve; take the leap of faith from the lion’s head to prove your worth and return with elixir.
Of course the search for the holy grail is the pursuit of a vessel; it’s a metaphor for the whole thing we’re doing with this existence. We’re all just vessels, containers of information, sensation, and experience, captured as a snapshot for a moment in time before we disappear again.
But like that art exhibit in Dublin said, from an exhibit about a ceramicist whose name I didn’t capture:
“It wasn’t the vessel, but the holding she was after.”
It reverberated through my bones and every one of my incarnations. I’ll never forget it, and it’s quite at the center of my thesis.
While searching for the picture I took of that exhibit, I found this instead, and it blew me away.
No wonder I’ve been feeling that this Friday the 13th, when I turn 40 Gregorian years old, but I’m closer to my Maya eldership age of 42.5 in that calendrical system, the invitation is to acknowledge the death of Holly Regan the woman and the rebirth of Riordan O’Regan, the queer trans Celtic pagan bard and poet.
Holly berries only grow on female trees. No wonder I always hated it as a kid when my aunt Susie called me “Holly berry.”
Reading the book Roy recommended to me, 50 Concepts of Critical Phenomenology, also is blowing a lot of things open, giving form to feelings.
That’s how a lot of this journe y is going: the research is giving name to things I’ve experienced directly, but that is part of my process/practice/praxis and what distinguishes my research. I rely primarily on direct experience and then later find validation and substantiation through documented works, art and research—rather than the other way around, which is how a lot of people do it, reading about something and then trying to test it.
Nah, this is the original science: As Reggie the mycologist and founder of Oakland Hyphae says, “fuck around and find out.”
The Shulgin approach, the alchemist’s path, the Hermetic framework and mystical impulse.
I’ve been reading a lot about asceticism and “holy anorexia,” stumbling across this text in the queer bookstore, The Common Press, where I found myself reflected last year: The Art of Not Eating. Its themes were reflected in Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, a book I’ve been starting and stopping for months now.
A reading in the book about Heidegger’s “Being-toward-death” led me to an episode of “This Jungian Life” on death as the ultimate transition. In it they mentioned Jung’s invocation of the alchemical premise:
"SOLUTIO ET COAGULATIO” - coagulate and dissolve.
One of those phrases that I channeled and drops in periodically, gaining new layers of meaning: “DISSOLVE IN ACID.”
or “HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY”
So I divined through the search engine, and came to this insight: Astrology is part of this process of coagulation and dissolving, assuming form momentarily:
https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2020/08/21/alchemists-2/
MICHAEL MAIER was a famous alchemist of his time (end of sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries) and was one of the founders of the society of the Rosicrucians.
He says: “The philosophers have said: that no one could attain the science of the spiritual, unless his soul be divine and his nativity spiritual. ” > last part means astrology/horoscope - are you a chosen one? Did the collection of information, experience, and sensation captured in the snapshot of the sky under which you incarnated align to make you open to the astral?
Paracelsus says that man has a mind in order that he may understand the truths which are made known in the Gospel, and only for this purpose. But on the other hand man has also a “lumen naturae” (a natural light), a source of knowledge hidden in nature, from which he can draw enlightenment.
This is the confession of a man who was one of the great reformers of medicine, and it states plainly that the Gospel is not the only source of enlightenment, but that there is another source of light and knowledge, concealed in nature. Paracelsus was an alchemist himself
“Nature is one, true and simple, perfect in its essence, and a secret spirit lies hidden in it. If thou wouldst recognise it, thou must thyself be true, simple, patient, steadfast and devout, and must not harm thy neighbour, in short : thou must be a regeneratus, a new being.”
Well, will you look at that—the synchronicity—I just found a note I wrote about that elusive quote and the exhibit wasn’t from Dublin, it was from Glasgow. Of course. Where the astrolocality placed the center of my creativity. Where my advisors who are currently in bodies are based.
Will pursuing something here help yield the ever-elusive visa? I don’t know. My communities are in London. But I feel like there has to be something more Transart could do to help me, even though they say over and over they can’t. Do the resources at LJMU count for nothing? Apparently. Anyway.
I also had the quote wrong. I made it mine by changing the noun, but it said:
“It was not the object but the holding she was after.”
The artist is Sarah Forrest, a Glaswegian ceramicist who I now must try and contact. (Of course, she also works with sound and has a Freud connection.)
This also came up when searching for the quote - because SEARCHING is part of my PRAXIS - wandering around Greece in what seems like aimless fashion but always reveals its purpose even if it’s not until years later. This is from my summer of roaming, first nomading, in 2021:
Speaking of AI. The Otter AI identified me as Cain during my morning channeling. Freaking cool. This was an important one for the concept of Trans* as emergent archetype so I will include the full transcript.
Coagulation + transcendence through specificity
Cain discusses his complex relationship with offerings, payments, and asceticism, exploring themes of self-worth, consent, and the nature of existence. He reflects on his experiences with addiction, overindulgence, and toxic relationships, emphasizing the importance of consent and the struggle to reconcile ancient programming with modern notions of self. Cain delves into the concept of identity, the value of pain as a marker of love, and the paradox of material existence. He concludes with thoughts on the transformative power of art and the journey towards self-realization, ultimately seeking to articulate these insights through his work.
Outline
Struggles with Self-Worth and Asceticism
Cain discusses his complicated relationship with offerings and payments, feeling unworthy and undeserving.
He explores the concept of asceticism, questioning where it turns into self-flagellation and martyrdom.
Cain reflects on the Gnostic belief that existence is about transcending it, questioning the purpose of incarnations.
He shares his experiences with addiction and overindulgence, learning that love often starts from a deficit.
Dynamics of Relationships and Self-Identity
Cain describes creating situations where he always had to atone for his sins, feeling unworthy in partnerships.
He recounts abusive interactions, questioning the naturalness and shame of constrained relationships.
Cain longs for a triad to reconcile the Holy Trinity within himself, finding his inner divinity.
He reflects on the anorexic narrative and self-consciousness about weight, influenced by societal and familial pressures.
The Role of Tradition and Materialism
Cain discusses the importance of traditions and the existence of anorexia and asceticism across cultures.
He explores the concept of denying nourishment and matter, equating it to denying light.
Cain reflects on the materialism and performance in society, questioning the true nature of the cosmos.
He emphasizes the need for identity and self before truly losing it, relating it to the Bodhisattva path.
Embracing Pain and Love
Cain expresses gratitude for pain, recognizing it as a sign of having loved.
He discusses the cultural inability to convey that pain means knowing love, questioning the desensitization of some people.
Cain suggests that alchemy can transform moments of darkness into holy longing.
He emphasizes the importance of experiencing pain to truly appreciate love and life.
The Paradox of Disappearance
Cain explores the paradox of disappearing completely by first being matter and material.
He discusses various methods of dissolving oneself, including meditation, dance, and psychedelics.
Cain reflects on the trans experience, starting with claiming clear identities and then dissolving them into oneness.
He emphasizes the importance of specific identities in the process of trans emergence.
Art and Practice in Healing
Cain discusses the role of art and practice in healing and rewriting trauma.
He emphasizes the importance of observing and witnessing events to conjure a new timeline.
Cain reflects on the duality of life, where both things can be true and must be fully felt.
He explores the concept of bracketing and temporary holding, relating it to the performance of life.
The Future and PhD Program
Cain expresses his certainty about pursuing a PhD program to build community and serve.
He reflects on the need to prove worthiness through art and leave to come back.
Cain emphasizes the importance of leaving and returning to find purpose and community.
He concludes with a call for guidance on how to share his experiences and art with the world.
TRANSCRIPT / AUDIO HERE
I have a strange relationship with offerings and payments, which means to days are always a little complicated. When you come into this world believing that you're fated to always be a worm, groveling below the surface of the Earth, wriggling in the dirt, always being measured and coming up short, born unworthy, undeserving, working your way back from something you don't even know what that came before you and will continue long after.
Oh, Father, please forgive me. I have sinned. Heaven help me. Why am I so unworthy? Why am I such a bad baby? The devil made me I'm just a little warm, undeserving of this body, undeserving of this lifetime. I
The Art of not eating holy anorexia. Where does asceticism turn into self flagellation and martyrdom? Where is it S and M that is consenting and where is it torture? Punishment, yeah, the key is consent. Do you actually, are you actually capable of giving it when this shit is so ancient and epigenetic and programmed in our DNA? Do we have the ability to even know our yes is in our nose when this shit goes back for centuries, millennia since the very dawn of existence. The Gnostics thought that the point of existence was to transcend it. But why would we even be put into these dimensions, into these incarnations, if we were only designed to escape them, even if that is the ultimate end, shouldn't we be participating in at first, enjoying experiencing what is an offering worth, if you don't know what you're actually giving up, if you haven't tasted from the cup, if you don't know how sweet the nectar is, does it mean as much?
For me, I've had to go all the way in to addiction and over indulgence in these complicated relationships with payments, I learned that love meant you started at a deficit and always had To make up for it. So I created situations over and over again where I was always making up for something, where I was always screwing up something and having to atone for my sins. I didn't even know how to exist in a partnership unless I started off at a negative unless I started off as unworthy, unless I started off as A Bad Baby,
unless I push the other person to become angry and hurt and unsatisfied with me. You made me. I didn't used to be like this bitch. You're crazy, bad baby. Why are you always misbehaving? Sit down, shut up, be seen and not heard. Where were you last night? Answer me. What time did you get home? Why does your breath smell like that? Why did you go straight to the shower? Why won't you look me in the eye? Why. I come up here and say it to my face, I dare you. Who did you sleep with this time? My girl, my girl, don't lie to me. Tell me, where did you sleep last night? The pines and the pines, when the sun I will shiver the whole night through these frameworks that are unnatural to begin with. Why are we constrained and shamed by them? Why are we tortured and blamed for them, and these aren't even how we were designed to live.
It should all be sharing in community, love given freely and consensually, nobody, anyone's property. I know everyone gets to choose what's right for them, but I really feel like that's the way it was supposed to be to begin with. That's the way that nature is. Doesn't mean animals don't choose monogamy, but it has to be a choice and not a duty, not an obligation, not a life sentence, not something we're ashamed when we can't comply with doesn't even feel right. I still long for a triad to reconcile the Holy Trinity, though I have now found the Holy Trinity within me, my inner divinity, sun, moon and star, mother, father, child artist, Mystic, Bard and alcoholic, all of them.
So much of my story is tinged with this anorexic narrative, people putting it upon me, people worrying about me, and yeah, sometimes me entering into it out of vanity, but I don't even think that's correct, because I didn't even know that I was quote, unquote fat, until Carol said cookies, and suddenly I realized I was naked in the Garden of Eden. Suddenly I became self conscious about my weight for the first time, until Dad shamed me for stress eating peanut butter, something I learned from my mother and her mother, covering up my feelings with sugar, carbs and Nuts, something I'm still wrestling with, that, and chocolate I
I think an offering and a payment giving given out of sheer obligation because you think you're supposed to, but you kind of resent it, is not An offering at all, and I think you're better off going with what feels right to you in the moment and giving what you can with a full heart, than just doing it because you think you're supposed to, but I don't know, because there's also something to these traditions. There's a reason why anorexia and asceticism exist across so many spaces and places. I and what is it with these women that deny and it's not just women, what is it with these people who deny themselves nourishment? Denying food is denying matter. Matter is frozen light. Oh, I love when stuff starts to come together like this. I was drawn to some YouTube videos yesterday for a reason, but at add and I didn't finish them. So I need to finish them, denying matter. I mean, the material, materialism is a reductionist, simplistic. Market is not the way the cosmos really is, but it's also the appearance that we keep up in this dimension. It's also the appearance we go all along with to have this experience. It's the game we're playing. It's the performance. The performance is assume form, abracadabra, hocus pocus. Suddenly, I have a corpus. Now you see me? Now you don't. It's the shaman show. Pretend to be a person for a little while. Pretend to be this person. Let's see. I truly do believe that you have to have an identity. You have to have a self before you can truly lose it before you can give it authentically. I think that's what's coming up right now, this idea of offering, what are you actually offering if you don't have anything clear to begin with. And this is part of what I'm reading about. This guru, teacher, student, tradition and relationship. And this feels very interrelated to the trisona aukan like you can't truly serve if you don't know who you are or were, I don't think if you're just blindly following, you never even really develop a personality, then you're just a lemming. You're just then you are just matter. And what's the point of having this body if we don't experience what we were brought here for and then choose to give it up? It's not a choice. You can't give consent if you haven't first experienced it, if you don't actually know what you're saying. And I think that is the bodhisattva path, like what's Yeah, like, Buddha started with everything. He didn't start with nothing, and then he had to give it up. He had to have, there had to be some stakes in the game. There had to be something worth surrendering. I mean, and that's not to say it has to be material wealth or anything like that, but I think you have to know who you are. I think you have to have a self. I mean, this was my thesis, years before I even had a PhD like you have to have a self before you can lose it. And your first instinct is usually the best one. I mean, that was one of my rallying cries, because that's under representation, that's, isn't dei that's all the acronyms that's, that's queerness and intersectionality. As we have to claim our separate identities and own them and love them without shame for them to fall away in any way that's meaningful when
you when you've lost everything, you're free to do anything. That means you have to start with something, even if it's an illusion. I don't know. I
I mean, there's no pain without love. There's no pain without an earthly experience. I mean, if you just showed up as kind of a blob and amoeba and then you lost everything. Well, that's not very interesting. A story needs dramatic tension. A story needs a conflict, which means the stakes need to be high enough. Which means you have to care, which means you have to have established yourself somewhere. You have to build things here.
This is making me emotional for for losing them to have any value.
The initiation doesn't mean
anything if you didn't care to begin with,
and this is part of what it means when I say thank you for the pain. I mean thank you for the pain, because inherent in it means you have loved Wow, wow. That's another one of those things that seems trite, but I'm just experiencing now. I.
If you are feeling pain, wow, like that feels like it's something that needs to be shared. Because I don't think people understand that. I don't our culture has no way to convey that if you are experiencing pain, it means you already know love. Maybe you just don't realize it.
If you're feeling pain for having lost something, if you're feeling pain, even if you're feeling pain for feeling like you never had anything like how would you know that, unless your soul had a concept of the opposite? That means that you have touched it in some moments? I think, I think otherwise, you're just completely desensitized to it, and some people are like that. But yeah, I mean, can that be an alchemy? Can that be a self in these moments of most darkness, to tell yourself that the only reason I am experiencing this right now is because I know it's opposite,
and that's holy longing. You can only feel the absence of something that you have a conception you of having known once, of having touched,
the longing, Is the offering, the service, the devotion,
the striving to become one and knowing that you'll never touch it until you reach the other side.
And I think, I think it's a disservice to this realm
getting goosebumps. To not try to experience it, to try to not experience it, to try to just check out from it. I think we have to have moments of that. We have to have practices. I mean, we can't just be complete hedonist. I mean, we can, but I don't recommend it. I think a life is made of service and some restriction. But again, you have to remind yourself, I think of what you're missing for it to mean anything. What good is an offering if you're doing it begrudgingly, if you're doing it out of obligation, if you're doing it out of fear because you think you're a bad baby. If you don't do it,
what would it look like to have a relationship, a partnership, or I don't automatically feel like I'm screwing up. What would it look like to have a practice where I don't feel like an imposter before I even start? What would it be like to have
lovers where no one's trying to redeem each other.
Would it look like to be in a relationship where I didn't always feel like the bad guy? What would it feel like to be in a relationship where someone just loved me and respected me and respected my boundaries as my consent.
What would it be like to be in relationship with someone where I wasn't afraid of them devouring me or rejecting me completely.
I think the paradox is that to disappear completely,
you first have to be matter and material. I mean, that's alchemy, the prima materia, coagulation and dissolving. Dissolve me in acid, dissolve me in psilocybin, dissolve me in anemia and cacao, dissolve me in meditation, dissolve me in dance, dissolve me in the trance and the music. Dissolve me in the silence and the flame the elements
dissolve me in the queerness that first claims its name and its boundaries and then
fades into oneness, yeah, maybe this is part of the transness. It's emergent archetype too, that it starts with claiming clear identities, and then so many clear identities start emerging. I mean, yeah, wow. I think this is part of it. Wow, okay, the acronym is getting longer, and everyone's getting annoyed, and it's getting frustrated, even for those of us in the community, because we're like, I don't know how would you possibly describe me. I'm so multifaceted, I need, like, 1000 words to describe it. So it starts with really getting specific about our identities. And the more we this is fucking the more we go into it, the more we go into it, and the more we focus on our specific identities, the more they actually dissolve in the process. Because the more clearly you try to articulate something that's inherently so multi dimensional and fractal, the more it actually starts to lose its meaning. I don't know. Like, yeah, it just fractalizes so much it it becomes so specific that it becomes unnameable, that it becomes inevitable, ineffable, that it becomes indescribable, multi dimensional, to the point where eventually we just let all the labels go. Yeah. This is part of trans emergence. You start with the specifics, and you go so far into them that you come out on the side of abstraction. You get so specific that it becomes abstract. How can I convey this in art and practice? I mean, this is it. You start with, this is who I am, and I claim it. And this is rewriting trauma right as you go back and you reframe it. And in doing that like that's it just needs to be witnessed. And then you can let it go. Can I get a witness? It starts with observance. I events that conjures a new timeline into existence, one where you are healed, one where you are who you say you are, one where you call the shots and claim the boundaries, and then after you do that, you can look away. The cat can be alive and dead at the same time.
Both things can be true, but that means both things have to be true, and that means you have to fully feel the realness.
You have to fully feel the matter, the material, the frozen light particles, the illusion of a thing you have to observe the container, the vessel, the altar, the offering that is a collection of information and experience, knowledge and feeling, a snapshot of a moment in this illusion we call space and Time. That's all which is what I just described, just just a container, just a holding, just an ellipse, no, just a parentheses of bracketing. That's from some philosophical thing. I don't remember what the bracketing. It's a bracketing attempt. Temporary holding, a performance one night only, the greatest show on earth
is the death and resurrection. Show is the coagulation and dissolving. Is the appearance of solids.
Way. Pretend to be particles. I
Okay, so this is my offering, is to figure out how to share these things with the world. I mean, the good news is that I have no doubt now that I should be in the PhD program. The next I was gonna say challenge, but the next opportunity is what to do with the thing that we're pretending as a body, what to do with this thing we call space and time and visas. And it's so interesting that I'm having to prove that I'm worthy of working in the place where I want to serve and build community and remain. But the way I do that is through art, and so we have to leave to come back sometimes. So I think that's what I have to do. So please show me where, how, with who
